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You could have bought Google for only $750,000

With the announcement of the transformation of Google into Alphabet, the technology icon has once again changed our world. Imagine what your world could be like without Google – That almost happened.

When Google was still in its infancy in Silicon Valley back in 1999, it almost was sold for cash. Competing tech site Excite had the chance to purchase Google when it was still very small. Excite CEO George Bell rejected Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s first offer of only $1 million for Google. The price was negotiated down to a mere $750,000. But Bell still rejected that.

Currently, Google’s market cap stands at $167 billion. Excite was later acquired by Ask Jeeves in 2004. That company then became Ask.com.